Marino de Medici, an Italian journalist who reported from Washington for more than a quarter century, becoming dean of the foreign press corps and distinguishing himself as a gimlet-eyed observer of American politics, died Nov. 15 at his home in Winchester, Va. He was 89. The cause was cancer, said his wife, Nicki Furlan de Medici. Mr. de Medici arrived in the United States in 1954 as a university student in the Fulbright scholars program.

Mr. de Medici went on to spend nearly his entire career as an interpreter of American life for Italian readers, principally as a Washington-based foreign correspondent for Il Tempo, a center-right newspaper headquartered in Rome. He covered presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, the successes of the American democratic tradition and the stains on it.